


wake up to the sound of your fleeting heart

by o_morgan



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:52:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5760208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_morgan/pseuds/o_morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One season in LA. </p>
<p>You could say this is a sequel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, it's a sequel. If you haven't read 'we'll fulfill our dreams and we'll be free' you should probably do that first.

“We should get married.”

Alex’s voice cuts through the dead air of a tv commercial, and it’s a little unsteady, even after she’d spent so long working up the nerve to say it. Kelley is quiet from her spot on the couch, tucked beneath a mound of blankets, her feet propped up in Alex’s lap.

“I think we already agreed to do that,” Kelley says eventually, slow and drawn out from the anticipation of sleep. 

“No, I mean we should get married now.”

“Right now? We’re already halfway into this new Dateline.”

Alex lets go of a long exhale and slides her coffee cup onto the corner of the table that had just been occupied by her feet. There’s a bit of maneuvering involving arms and legs, and slipping beneath the blanket that’s warm from Kelley, until Alex is wedged exactly where she wants to be, in the tight space between the couch and this person she still thinks about endlessly.

“Be serious,” she says, her face close enough to Kelley’s that her voice is barely a whisper.

“Does this have anything to do with the rumor going around that you’re dating that basketball player?”

“No,” Alex’s slow blink is labored, like her eyelashes are weighed down with the white lie that her voice could barely hide, and she’s glad that Kelley’s eyes are still closed in a half-assed attempt at sleep.

“Because you know that doesn’t bother me, right? It’s just part of the deal when you don’t spill the details of your private life. People speculate.”

“But no one ever speculates that I’m in love with you.”

Kelley’s eyes open then, bright and sad, and her hands are warm when they slip across Alex’s face. 

“Honey,” is breathed across her cheek without the familiar drawl that usually accompanies it, and Alex lets it warm her skin.

“I talked to him for five minutes at an after party, and we followed each other on twitter. That was it. I’ve lived with you for years, I’ve held your hand on red carpets, and bought Christmas trees with you. Why does no one think I could be in love with you?” 

Alex’s voice isn’t bitter, or broken, or sad. It’s just soft.

“I don’t know,” Kelley answers quietly. “Sometimes it still catches me by surprise, even after all of this time.”

“Me too,” Alex smiles and it almost reaches her eyes.

“Al, do you want to talk to Sports Illustrated?” Kelley asks, a finger tracing Alex’s chin.

It’s their shorthand for going public, that when they want to, when they’re damn good and ready to, they’ll say it in print. Alex has had the writer she wants for it saved in her phone contacts for a year.

“No. I don’t know,” Alex says, shifting to pull the blanket tighter over her shoulder. “I just want to marry you. And not because of what anyone else is saying, or isn’t saying, but because I really, really, want to.”

Kelley’s mouth twitches the way it always does when she’s thinking, before she leans forward to press her lips to the end of Alex’s chin, and when she pulls back there’s certainty in her eyes.

“We’d need at least two weeks, probably three just to give my family time to get here. And it would have to be small. We wanted small anyways, but I’m talking really small.”

“Really?” Alex asks, so small and hopeful it makes Kelley smile back at her.

Kelley presses her toes into the couch to inch higher up Alex’s torso, until her lips are close enough to press a string of slow kisses against Alex’s. 

“It was never gonna take a lot of convincing to get me to marry you sooner.”

Kelley’s words curl into her with a tenderness that has never faded, and the familiarity makes her heart ache. 

“You always say the right things,” Alex whispers, and Kelley kisses her again, harder, like she’s forgotten about Dateline and the promise of sleep.

“Hey Al,” Kelley says eventually, not bothering to pull back, so the words are messy and warm across Alex’s mouth. “You know how I knew you weren’t dating that basketball player?”

Alex doesn’t open her eyes, her response hummed against lips, and she plays along with Kelley the way she always does.

Kelley’s answer is punctuated by kisses that linger, “Way, way too tall to be your type.”

Her eyes are still closed, but she can feel the way Kelley’s mouth splits into a smile against her own, and Alex’s laugh is swallowed away.

***

It’s Syd that shows up before anyone else, hours before the ceremony is supposed to start, in a dress that’s brand new and impossibly tight. It’s a dress that suggests she’s figured it all out, that what had been billed as a last minute party to celebrate an engagement that had been official for well over a year, wasn’t actually that.

A silver gift bag dangles from the edge of Syd’s outstretched finger, and Alex leans against the open front door and narrows her eyes.

“How did you know?” she asks, pulling at the belt of her robe, her hair partially done and messy with clips.

Syd laughs when she steps inside the house past Alex, “You had like, twenty boxes of paper straws in your guest room closet, right under a garment bag with a white dress.”

“You are so damn nosy.”

“I know,” Syd says, shrugging her shoulders before grabbing Alex’s hand. “Now, let’s go get you married, lover.”

*

The house is quiet in the lead up.

Parents mingle in the hallway, wiping at tears that threaten to mark delicate fabric, while sisters twist hair and button white dresses. Syd spends her time floating between the separate rooms that Kelley and Alex each occupy, an always full cup of beer perched carefully between her fingers, a souvenir from her short-lived stint helping Jerry tap kegs.

“How’s it going over there?” Alex asks when Syd slips back into her room. 

“Oh, she’s doing really good now, I just took her and Erin some beers. They looked thirsty.”

Alex’s hands tremble when she laughs, and the makeup brush is clumsy between her fingers. Syd’s sudden hands on hers steady them.

“Hey, I got you,” Syd says grabbing for the brush, her voice so unusually soft that Alex looks up at her with a line between her brows. 

Syd stares back, leaning in close to brush gentle strokes across the bow of Alex’s cheek.

“She looks amazing,” Syd says, softly still, a hint of beer on her breath. And then in a tone that feels more familiar, “If you don’t marry her, I will, because damn.”

*

There’s a moment that’s just theirs in the winding minutes before they become official, alone together in the narrow hallway that leads to a backyard filled with people they love.

Alex looks at Kelley in vintage lace and soft waves that frame her face, and her mouth drops open so suddenly that Kelley nearly misses her lips when she springs forward to kiss her. It feels nervous and shaky, and then Alex can feel a laugh, loud and aggressive, across her flushed skin when Kelley pulls away. 

“Why are you laughing?” 

“So I don’t cry,” Kelley says, her voice with a noticeable shake. 

Kelley won’t look at her, her eyes following the movement of her fingers as they trace across the seams of Alex’s dress. And when she does look up at Alex, after a long pause that feels like she was gathering some courage, Kelley’s face is twisted into a silent sob that she forces another laugh through.

“You look so beautiful,” Kelley says, and her shaky laugh fades away when Alex leans down to kiss her.

*

Alex Morgan marries Kelley O’Hara on a January day that’s bright and warm.

*

Hours after they’re forever, and hours before they board a flight to Paris, Alex’s hands fumble over the delicate buttons of Kelley’s wedding dress.

Her head is light from joy mixed with an open bar, and it softens the edges of everything just enough to force narrowed eyes and exhales of frustration across Kelley’s bare shoulders.

“I don’t want to rush you or anything, but we’re kind of on a time crunch, you know? Early flight,” Kelley teases, alcohol making her words drawn out and heavy.

“These buttons are too small,” Alex huffs, her patience even thinner when it involves something she really wants, like her wife out of a dress that feels like an endless tease. She pushes Kelley’s hair up and over her shoulder, and the touch of fingers to skin only increases her irritation.

“My dress has a zipper for this very reason, so you could take it off in no time, even with a lot of drinks. Especially because of a lot of drinks. I know what you’re like at weddings.”

“Hey.”

“A zipper is thoughtful. These tiny buttons are not. I hate them.”

There’s a harder tug, and the sound of fabric starting to tear, and Alex’s fingers stop.

“Was that what I think it was? Al, this dress is vintage.”

“Kelley,” her name comes out in too long of a whine, frustration and hunger stirring something in both of them then. “Please help me or I will go find some scissors.”

Kelley’s hands are warm when they reach back to lace with Alex’s, and it’s a deliberately slow journey, Alex’s hands being brushed over lace and skin and the curved edges of hips, before their hands are knotted together in the hollow beneath Kelley’s ribs. 

Alex can feel her heartbeat against Kelley’s back, and then she can feel the way it starts to slow when Kelley presses a kiss to her knuckles.

“Now,” Kelley breathes. “Just take it one button at a time there, tiger. We’ve got all night.”

*

The wedding still throbs in their temples too early the next morning. Alex’s eyes are shielded by a dark pair of sunglasses, less for anonymity and more to guard against the sunlight that has started to invade their quiet block of seats near the terminal window.

“My whole body hurts,” Kelley groans. “What did we drink last night?”

“Everything,” Alex answers with just enough regret in her voice. Her stomach churns and she shakes her head, “I’m never drinking again.”

“Jeri was relentless with that bottle of tequila. I’m pretty sure Syd is still passed out in that lounge chair by the pool,” and it’s enough to make Alex laugh, with fingers pressed into her temples.

“It was a damn good wedding though,” Alex mumbles.

“It was the best wedding,” Kelley agrees, holding out her hand, palm up, for a high five that Alex gives with as much enthusiasm as she can manage.

The rising sun creeps up higher along Kelley’s face, the light bouncing off the soft waves of her hair, and Alex leans over to kiss the spot along her jaw that’s been warmed by the sun before dropping her head onto Kelley’s shoulder and closing her eyes.

“You’re my wife,” Kelley says eventually, stretching her legs out in front of her. The words roll out of her so casually that it makes Alex feel warm, and she can only nod.

“You are my hungover wife,” and Alex nods again, her hand curling into Kelley’s thigh.

Kelley takes a picture of them then, weary and pressed together, and Alex doesn’t protest.

“That’s for Syd,” Kelley says, and Alex can hear the warmth of her smile when she stares at their picture before sending it off. “You’re still a knockout, Morgan, even with a hangover.”

“I’m actively holding back vomit, but thank you for lying,” Alex shifts lower into her seat, fishing for a better angle against Kelley’s shoulder. “What are you working on over there?”

Kelley answers the question by angling her phone so Alex can see a picture. They are blurred edges under strands of white lights, pressed tightly together on the dance floor. Only their faces are in focus, the sharp angles of Kelley’s jaw dropped open into a generous laugh, and Alex’s eyes wide with something that feels too big for words, joy and certainty and a mix of other things.

“I was thinking, since we are now officially official, that it might be time to consider Sports Illustrated. But until then, and because I want to instagram the hell out of Paris with my lady, we could start with this. It’s a big step, I know, but we could sleep on it if you want. Or we could keep living our life the way we always have, and that’s ok with me too.” 

Alex still hasn’t looked away from the picture of them. There’s a tightness along her ribs at the thought of living louder than they ever have, and the ache feels comfortable and welcome. There are no nerves in her fingertips when she reaches over to drag them across the filter selections on Kelley’s phone, because Alex knows that this is what she’s always wanted.

Alex taps on her filter choice with confidence before picking her head up off of Kelley’s shoulder to meet her gaze, “Definitely Valencia.” 

Kelley doesn’t say anything, but the words are in her eyes and the upturned curve of her lips, and Alex can hear her perfectly. She leans over to kiss Kelley in their corner of the airport, lips pressed to lips, and then the spot along Kelley’s temple where Alex’s own head had ached until a few minutes ago.

Kelley messes with the keyboard, typing and retyping before finally hitting ‘post’ before Alex can see her words. Kelley powers down her phone and tucks it into the pocket of her carry on before curling into Alex’s side, faking an attempt at a nap even though Alex can feel the way her heart races.

Alex opens instagram, her own heart pounding while the photo loads slowly on free airport wifi. And then they’re there, dancing in filters and soft light.

_Love is wild. Right, @alexmorgan13? #happywifehappylife_

* * *

After two days in Paris, Kelley is the first one to turn her phone back on.

“You don’t know how to say it,” Alex teases, her voice strained as she stretches sleep and ache from her muscles.

“Yeah, I do. Just give me a second to remember, and stop trying to distract me with those legs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alex rolls closer into Kelley, propping herself up on an elbow, and tightening the grip her bare leg has across Kelley’s hip. “You’re taking a long time to remember, though.”

Kelley ignores her, staring up at the ceiling while she mouths words with a familiar crease of frustration running between her eyebrows.

“I only took two years of French in high school, and that was like, 15 years ago,” Kelley says, still not looking at Alex, but fully aware that she’s being stared at.

“You can’t turn it into “only two years” now, after you’ve spent the past week bragging that you had “two whole years” of it. You pretty much insinuated that you were bilingual.”

“Ok, I got it,” Kelley says, cutting Alex off when she reaches for the phone that’s been abandoned on the nightstand for days. “Just let me double check my inflection.”

“Cheater,” Alex laughs, leaning down to press a kiss to Kelley’s shoulder, her stomach doing a flip when she hears Kelley’s phone power on.

It’s quiet in their room then, as they both wait for what they pretend they aren’t waiting for. And then it’s a chorus of tones: email notifications, text message alerts, and dozens of missed calls, all chiming loudly until Kelley flicks her ringer off. There’s still a ringing in her ears, until Alex realizes it’s her heartbeat.

“Ha,” Kelley says after a long pause, flipping her phone towards Alex too quickly for her to see anything. “I knew I was right. ‘Alex Morgan, tu es l’amour de ma vie’. That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

“Morgan-O’Hara.” Alex corrects without thinking, as if it’s always been that way, the two of them connected forever by a hyphen and what it means, and she catches the grin at the corner of Kelley’s mouth.

Kelley glosses over all the missed texts and emails, but Alex knows they’ll have to answer those things soon, and she looks over at Kelley for a hint of when that time might be. Kelley still stares at her phone, and Alex can see her opening a new app, the change of light flashing in the tired gloss of her eyes.

“Oh my god, Al,” Kelley says slowly, her mouth hanging open so exaggeratedly that Alex eventually feels ridiculous falling for it.  

“What? What’s the matter?” Alex pictures negative press and angry tweets.

“I got 20,000 new instagram followers,” the fake enthusiasm is bright in Kelley’s eyes and the volume of her laugh, and Alex stretches out across the top of her to kiss her silent and steal the phone away.

*

It’s another two days before they decide to weed through everything they’ve chosen to ignore in favor of days and nights spent under the covers of their too-expensive hotel room.

They spend a late afternoon in an empty cafe, Kelley flicking through a long list of text messages while Alex starts on emails, deleting anything that isn’t from their reps, or sponsors, or US Soccer, and then quietly reading aloud everything that is.

“Kevin wants to know if we want to release an official statement through him?” Alex asks, summarizing the already brief email from her agent.

“Syd has some questions for us also, um, ‘Jesus, have you guys even left that room yet?’, ‘Kelley, can you instagram a cup of coffee so I know you’re alive?’, ‘how long has this milk been in your fridge?’, and then finally, ‘it’s been over three days, you pervs.’” Kelley reads the string of texts in an even, dull tone that makes Alex grin. “That last one wasn’t really a question, but you get the idea. There are about 30 more just like that from her. And 15 from Pinoe.”

Kelley takes a picture of her extended middle finger hovering over her latte and sends it to Syd before looking towards Alex.

“Do you want to make an official statement through Kevin?”

Alex is only half-listening, her attention focused on the screen grabs of her twitter mentions that her agent had included in his email. There is public support from teammates and friends, athletes that she’s played against, and plenty of others that she’s never even met, and mixed in along the way are messages of support from young people who wear her jersey in their profile pictures.

Alex looks at Kelley to answer her question, but the words won’t come around the lump in her throat.

*

“Let’s do it again.”

“Al, I’m tired.”

“Come on, just one more time,” Alex kisses her, soft and tempting, her hands playing along Kelley’s hips.

“You better make this worth my while,” Kelley says, faking annoyance while she adjusts the tilt of her beanie with gloved hands. “I want a beret.”

Alex squats low to fiddle with the self-timer on her phone, adjusting the angle just right against the paper coffee cup she uses a makeshift stand. 

“Ready?” Alex asks, bright and loose as she moves back to stand beside Kelley.

“Eighth time’s gonna be the charm. Hold my hand on this one,” Kelley reaches out, wiggling her fingers until Alex’s hand is in hers.

It’s the tenth time that’s the charm, the two of them centered perfectly in front of the Eiffel Tower, holding hands in a mid-air jump that leaves the bottoms of their coats looking like wings, limbs splayed out wide at their sides. Alex looks that last picture over carefully one final time, before kissing her approval to the tip of Kelley’s frozen nose.

“I was serious about that beret.”

Alex buys Kelley a beret, and then takes her to bed.

*

They don’t release an official statement through their agents.

Alex follows Kelley’s lead instead, posting their carefully choreographed picture to her twitter account with a simple caption that doesn’t test the character count.

_Kelley and I are so grateful for the love and support we have received these last few days. Thank you!! #betrue_

***

Their club team had gained a name while they’d finished their time in Germany, and when Alex looks over the gear they’ve been sent in preparation for the start of preseason, she can’t help but feel like it might be a jinx.

The Los Angeles Victory release their supplemental roster in the weeks before the college draft, and Alex and Kelley take to studying it carefully in the early morning hours just after a run. It’s filled out with a few younger players they don’t know much about, two Americans who bypassed college to sign Europan contracts, and a healthy amount of semi-pro players who’d spent years proving themselves in lower leagues. 

The roster is hopelessly lopsided, too full in some positions, and threadbare in others. They don’t have a keeper, or much of a back line, and Alex’s only real help up top is a Bundesliga player coming off of knee surgery. 

For two weeks they watch blurry college soccer highlight reels at their kitchen table, Kelley quietly making notes on players that stand out, in the margins of magazines, or at the bottom of their grocery list. They watch the draft in the same spot, their early morning coffee growing cold while they keep track of their team’s picks in a half-empty notebook.

The picks fill in some holes, a few forwards, and a keeper they both liked. Their last draft pick is a small school centerback that Kelley had been instantly charmed by, a quiet player with pace and a knack for clean, smart tackles. She’d dedicated the entire back page of a grocery list to notes about her, before she’d typed them up in a email to the team’s general manager. Alex looks over at Kelley when they announce the pick, and she can see the wheels turning in Kelley’s head, wondering if they’d listened to her advice, or if maybe they’d just been sold on her all along.

Alex knows, and she kisses congratulations in Kelley’s skin.

***

In the days after Paris, it was Sports Illustrated that had reached out first. The lengthy article had been pitched as a way for Alex to promote the new league, tying it in with her time in Germany, and her changing role as a veteran. The unspoken question in their offer was obvious, “Can we ask about Kelley?”

When Alex asks Kelley for some sort of permission that she’s already been given, Kelley straddles her lap and kisses her slowly.

“Don’t tell them everything, but maybe mention that you kissed me first, and that it took you friggin’ forever.”

*

Three weeks before the start of the season, Kelley reads her advanced copy twice through while stretched out across the living room floor. And then she reads it again, out loud the sections that are about her, pride lifting through her voice.

_When pressed about why she chose to come home to this new league, and why she chose Los Angeles out of all the cities available to her, Morgan’s answer is simple._

_“I loved my time playing in Germany, more than I ever thought I would, but California is our home, and I’ve waited my entire career for the chance to represent it. So it was always going to be LA. I think it was an even easier choice for Kelley, mostly because the surfing’s better here than on the Oregon coast.”_

_There’s an almost bashful smile when her name is finally mentioned. Kelley, of course, is Kelley O’Hara, Morgan’s longtime teammate on the national team, and as recently revealed through their various social media accounts, her new wife._

_When pressed about their relationship, Morgan reveals what feels like a practiced amount. From a set up on the balcony of the apartment they’ve shared for years, she stares out at the ocean a few blocks away where O’Hara (both women will keep their last names, professionally at least) surfs with fellow national team player Tobin Heath._

_“I used to think that Kelley snuck up on me, but I know now that I spent a long time falling for her. I think that rooming together in 2012 for the Olympics was the start of it, and after that, I was a goner.” Alex’s smile is sly, and that’s as far as she’ll go. “I never questioned the way I felt about her, though. Not once. Not because she was my teammate or one of my best friends, or because she was a woman. I just- I knew she was it.”_

_The difference in Morgan from years past to now is marked. Gone are the fumbled words that had become the inadvertent trademark of her interviews. She’s measured patience when she speaks now. Even the way she spins the wedding ring on her finger seems more of a habit, instead of an outlet of nerves. It could be chalked up to her time in Germany, where she learned to speak slower in post-game interviews, mindful of the way words could be lost in translation. Her age could also have something to do with it, the veteran striker will turn 29 this year, but when Morgan speaks now, her eyes stay locked on the ocean in front of her, and it’s not hard to figure out the effect her wife has had._

_“Kelley and I have managed to live a very low key life together for the past few years, not because we were hiding, but because that’s the way we liked it. We don’t really plan on changing that, but when you get to marry someone like Kelley O’Hara, you brag about it on twitter a little.”_

_Morgan and O’Hara are the two biggest names on the LA Victory. And where other clubs are stockpiled with three to four allocated national team players, in Los Angeles it will only be the two of them. Their season starts later this month, with a home match against a talented Chicago team led by Morgan’s national team strike partner Sydney Leroux, and they’ll lead a squad full of young, unproven players right out of college. It will also be the first game they play as married teammates, but Morgan doesn’t expect it to effect their relationship on the field._

_“I don’t think either of us are worried about it, we’ve handled pressure much bigger than this before. I think there might be some challenges, we have a very young team, obviously, and this is a brand new league, a brand new team, but I know that we’re all game to work hard to establish something here. This is important to all of us. We want to win a championship, or three, for this city.”_

_Morgan’s smile is coy, but there’s noticeable weight behind it. “I think we’ll do good things here.”_

* **

Alex hears it before she sees it, a ‘pop’ followed by a howl of pain that rings in her ears, and the cross she’d been expecting from the right flank never makes it to her feet. She turns with her hands already on her head, and their other big name forward, the Swede from the Bundesliga that Alex had connected so easily and instantly with, is twisted on the field with her face pressed so tightly into the grass it almost mutes her cries. 

A trainer sprints past Alex’s peripheral, and Kelley is right on his heels.

They’re four days out from the home opener.

“Fuck,” Alex says, loud enough for just her as she starts the long jog across the field. “Fuck.”

*

In the car later, after the rest of practice is canceled and everyone has slipped out of their eerily quiet locker room, Alex yells it this time, just once. 

“Fuck!”

Kelley lets her have this moment of anger that clashes wildly with panic. She keeps her hands tucked into her lap just behind the steering wheel until Alex is ready. And when she is ready, signalled by a long exhale from the passenger’s seat, Kelley reaches over to slip a hand across Alex’s knee.

“This doesn’t feel like a promising start,” Alex says, calmer now as she stares out across the empty parking lot. 

“I know, but we’re gonna be fine. This is just a setback,” Off Alex’s look, Kelley corrects herself. “It’s a big setback, but they’ll pick up another forward from somewhere, and you’ve got Kelsey up top in the meantime. She’s looked good in those scrimmages.”

“She’s still too timid on the ball.”

“Than help her to not be,” Kelley says, the slightest edge in her voice that suggests her solution should have been obvious.

“Are you my wife right now, or my captain?”  Alex turns toward Kelley with narrowed eyes, but the tight line of her lips has softened, and the corners start to turn up slowly. 

Kelley still has her hand across her knee when she leans over to press a kiss into Alex’s shoulder.

“I’m both for the next eight months, darlin’.” 

Alex’s easy laugh fills the car and it feels like what they both needed.

***

Alex’s knee bounces when she dresses in front of her locker. 

A reporter had asked her the night before, in the long media line she’d had to navigate just after practice, what it felt like to have the weight of the league stacked onto her shoulders, and it had broken her focus so easily. There was a stammered out non-answer before she’d slipped away to spend the rest of her night thinking about it until Kelley begged her to stop.

She’d felt it just fine on her own, the weight, the expectations. She didn’t need the reminders.

And now, half a day later, her knee shakes wild with nerves while she pulls on a kit in colors that still look foreign against her skin, a bright shade of red she’s never worn in her career, and she tries to find focus in perfecting the fit of her game socks. She pulls and tugs and fiddles with the seam along her toes when Kelley’s unlaced boots stop right in front of her.

“Al, can you help me with this?”

Kelley’s armband is hanging from her outstretched hand when Alex looks up.

Alex knows this is for her benefit, because Kelley has always been able to read her so effortlessly, but also because she’d caught Kelley trying on that armband in the empty version of this locker room an hour earlier, adjusting the velcro a dozen times until it had fit just right when she’d flexed her bicep against it.

Alex pulls the armband from Kelley’s fingers as she stands, and it’s quiet, methodical work as she slips it high up onto her wife’s arm, calm fingertips grazing Kelley’s skin before they neatly tuck the sleeve of her jersey under the band. Alex gets the tightness right on the first try. Kelley flexes her approval, and Alex starts to find her focus.

“I might make you do that before every game now,” Kelley grins, and her fingers trail down to Alex’s wrist, and it’s their moment in this otherwise hectic locker room.

“Whatever it takes to stay on the captain’s good side,” Alex’s smile is wide.

“Quit flirting and get your boots on,” Kelley says as she spins away and cups her hands around her mouth. “Ok, let’s huddle up.”

*

Alex takes the rest of the night in with a sudden eagerness. 

From the grown men and young girls who wear their names across their back, and their city across the front, to the way Kelley’s voice rings through the tight huddle, calm but brimming with confidence. Kelley pats her on the butt as they break for the field, yelling something over her shoulder that Alex can’t quite make out. It’s the slightest break in the serious way Kelley has always stormed onto the field, and something about it stirs up Alex’s nerves, but they’re the kind she lives for as a player, that little bit of shake in her fingers just before kickoff, when the pitch is pristine and full of potential.

The crowd noise swells just before the whistle blows, and Alex catches the wide eyes of the young forward as she lines up across the midfield line from Sydney Leroux.

Alex calls her name then, loud enough to filter over the crowd, and so Syd is sure to hear. Kelsey looks over at her, and Alex smiles.

“She’s just any other player out here. You don’t even know her name.”

Alex gets a nod in return, and she can see the clenched jaw in the young forward’s profile.

*

They gut out a tie in the dying moments of a game they were largely outmatched in. 

The goal comes off a quick restart after a hard foul on Alex right outside the box, and the throbbing pain in her hip disappears when their replacement rookie forward redirects a lofted ball just past the keeper.

Alex practically carries Kelsey off the field on her shoulders.

*

Syd feigns offense at dinner hours later.

“You don’t even know her name?”

“Oh, come on. It’s just a little head game I picked up from some asshole I played against in Germany,” Alex says, motioning towards Kelley.

“And it works,” Kelley shrugs, sipping from her beer. “Obviously.”

Alex reaches for Kelley’s hand under the table, giddy at the way Syd rolls her eyes at them.

***

They’ve got the small theater to themselves, the perks of a late night movie on a random weeknight, but Kelley still leans in close to Alex when she talks through the trailers.

“Hey, are we rooming together on this road trip?”

Alex doesn’t look away from the screen, distracted by the lights that flash across her face until she can feel Kelley’s eyes on her.

“Huh?” Alex asks, dropping a hand on Kelley’s leg as a wordless apology for her distraction. “Rooming together? No. Right?”

“Why not?”

“We could if you want to. It’s just- we don’t room together for national team stuff. I guess I figured we’d do the same for club.” Alex’s attention is still divided between the screen and quick glances at Kelley from the corner of her eye. “And you always say I’m moody on the road.”

When Kelley’s silent for longer than she’s supposed to be, Alex looks towards her, just making out the pensive stare in Kelley’s profile when a warning against texting during the movie flashes bright across the screen.

“So it’s not because the rookies tease you and call you ‘Mrs. Cap’?” The question comes out too fast, like it’s something Kelley’s been secretly dreading to ask.

“No,” Alex says, her face twisted up in surprise. “You know I only flipped them off for that because they were chanting it at me to try and get me to miss that PK at the end of practice.”

“And you still made it.”

“And I still made it,” Alex says behind a smirk, her hand finding Kelley’s in the dark and over the armrest. “I don’t mind that you’re my captain. I think you’re damn good at it. And I kind of just assumed the Mrs. Whatever-Kelley’s-Current-Title-Is nickname would be following me around as long as we’re playing together. I’m pretty proud of it actually. I promise.”

“Ok,” Kelley breathes out, hiding the sheepish curve of her smile against the warm skin of Alex’s cheek just as the lights start to dim. “Just checking.”

***

On the first road trip of the season, Alex rooms with a defender and they lose two in a row.

There are no last gasp goals to salvage a point. There are only losses that feel earned and goals they couldn’t keep from littering the back of their net.

The lineups don’t change, the formation never adjusts, and Alex spends two halftimes in unfamiliar locker rooms staring stone faced while their coach yells and angrily circles plays on a whiteboard that will never work against a defense like Philly’s, or a front line like New York’s.

They don’t talk about the losses together, on the road or the long, quiet flight back to LA. It’s an unspoken agreement to keep it away from home, so they pretend to leave it all in another city, ignoring it like the pile of luggage they dump just inside the doorway the minute they’re back in their too-warm apartment.

Kelley leaves a trail of of clothes in her wake, shedding team gear and running shoes in scattered heaps that stretch from the front door to the living room. Alex follows it eventually, stepping over a pair of warm up pants with a tight grip on the last beer she’d salvaged from their otherwise empty fridge.

There’s a long sleeve shirt emblazoned with their club crest occupying the spot on the couch next to Kelley, and Alex looks it over before flicking it away. It lands somewhere out of sight while Alex settles in and bumps the cold bottle against the leg Kelley has propped up on the coffee table.

There’s a gash across the lower half of Kelley’s leg, bright red tears of skin that cut an angry path from her shin to the curve of her ankle. Alex can still make out the stud pattern of New York’s center forward in the messiest parts of it.

“She got me good,” Kelley mumbles, pushing the edges of the trainer’s makeshift bandage back against her skin, before reaching for the bottle Alex is still offering. She presses it over the top of the bandage for a minute, letting loose a little sigh that’s about more than the cool relief the sweating bottle offers.

“I’ll get her good next time,” Alex growls, and Kelley’s laugh is soft and appreciative through her nose when she leans back into the couch.

“There’s no food,” Alex says eventually, soft like an apology, and Kelley moves to drape her banged up leg across Alex’s lap. Her foot hangs loose at the ankle and Alex tugs at her sock.

“That’s ok,” Kelley sighs, taking a long pull from the bottle. “Hey, I missed you this week.”

“You saw me every day.” Alex’s fingers trace the edge of the bandage and then continue on along Kelley’s shin.

“I missed you as my wife,” Kelley clarifies. “I had my fill of you as my teammate.”

“You’ve never had your fill of me as either one,” Alex cocks her eyebrow and pulls the bottle from Kelley’s hand. Her wedding ring clicks against the glass and Kelley drops her leg and sits up on the end of the couch, an arch in her back that makes everything feel sudden.

“Hey, Al?” Kelley asks, turning back to look at her wife, her hand coming to rest just inside Alex’s thigh.

Alex stares at the spot where Kelley’s fingers are curling into her leg, and her response is a grunt from low in her throat.

“Want to go to bed?”

*

Alex forgets their forgettable week in the heat of Kelley’s skin.

***

With time, things become harder to ignore.

Two months into the season, Alex hasn’t won a game since Germany, and her life becomes defined by an increasingly hostile series of shirt tugs.

Cheap tackles from outmatched defenders had always been a part of her career, but they start to come less frequently when she’s wearing club colors, and it’s an unavoidable statement. Alex is less of a threat here, in this city, on this team. Calls for her begin to transition into calls against her. The quick temper she’d always played with becomes less and less controlled every time she’s stripped of the ball, until it spills over into something undisciplined and dangerous, tackles from behind, a tangle of legs without the slightest regard for ankles or knees, her hand knotted up in her opponent’s jersey to make sure they fall together.

She starts to accumulate yellow cards at a quarter of the rate she used to score goals, and the only thing that keeps the cards from turning red is Kelley.

Alex learns quickly that she has limited time to argue a call before Kelley is down the field and right behind her, pulling her away from a debate they both know she won’t win by a handful of the back of her jersey.

“Go” is all Kelley ever says to her on the field, as many times as it takes until Alex walks away, feigning innocence that makes Kelley grit her teeth.

Alex starts to learn how to play entire second halves on a yellow card, with apologetic pats on the back as a defender tries to find her legs again, as quickly as Kelley learns their coach isn’t willing to pull her, even with the looming potential of playing down a man.

“You need to sit Alex,” Kelley says to him eventually, finally, from the sidelines, the two of them staring across the pitch as Alex gets a warning from a too-patient official. Kelley toes the sideline, her voice low enough for just his ears, but he never looks her way.

“How about you just get her under control out there? We need her to score goals,” Rob doesn’t bother lowering his voice to match hers, and Kelley catches the way some of the bench players turn their heads.

“She isn’t scoring goals, and this isn’t going to help,” Kelley’s louder too, defensive of her abilities as a captain, and of her stubborn wife.

“I’m the coach,” Rob says, sharp like a challenge, and the whole bench stares over at Kelley then, hopeful for a rebuttal that she can’t give.

There are crescent-shaped nail marks dug into her palms when she turns on her heels to jog back to her line, and then his voice is loud at her back, cutting through the quiet stadium, and punctuated by aggressive claps.

“Hey, let’s tighten it up back there, Kelley.”

* 

There’s visible tension in Kelley’s hands, white knuckles gripping at the steering wheel on the silent drive home, but Alex keeps her eyes trained outside the passenger window, and Kelley doesn’t let it spill over. Not yet, because she doesn’t want an argument echoing through this small space. She doesn’t want an argument at all, and it startles her how quickly that has become their default.

When Kelley makes the turn onto their street she catches sight of Alex in her peripheral, and it’s immediate the way the tight coil of anger she’s begun to play with starts to fade from her posture as the promise of home draws closer. Alex is out of the car before Kelley can cut the engine.

She wants to let it go as easily as Alex pretends to do, to leave it all for another night, to ignore the way the frustration of their job has started to creep closer to home in a way they promised each other it never would, and she almost does. The driver’s door closes behind her, and then she watches Alex dig out her own gear bag from the trunk, looping it up onto her shoulder before finding Kelley’s and hoisting that one onto her shoulder too.

It’s something Alex has always done when she’s feeling guilty, carrying Kelley’s gear bag, or her carry-on, or the heaviest bag of groceries. It’s the same sort of wordless apology that’s carried them for so long, the one Kelley finds endearing and understands completely. And something about it makes her snap.

“One more yellow and you’re suspended,” Kelley’s tone is sharp, honed by Alex, and Rob, and too many losses. “Do you get that?”  “Yes,” Alex bites back, her hands twisting around the straps of Kelley’s bag.

“Then start acting like it, Alex.”

Kelley grabs her bag from Alex’s hands and turns towards home, the trunk of their car slamming shut loudly at her back.

*

Kelley wakes the next morning with something close to an apology on the tip of her tongue, but the space next to her in bed is empty, and Alex, and her running shoes, are already gone.

***

It’s Kelley who picks up right where Alex left off.

They’re six minutes away from their first draw since the home opener, a stretch of time that seems impossibly long ago. It’s a point that means nothing in the standings, but everything to them, and it’s Kelley’s voice that has carried them through a solid 84 minutes. The backline stands tall under her direction and it trickles up the field, instilling a jolt of confidence in every player along the way, including Alex. Especially Alex.

And then all of the careful patience, the gentle build of fragile team chemistry, the potential for that one desperate point, is for nothing.

Houston gets one last shot at goal, pushing through on a counter attack that’s sloppy but dangerous, the way a wild, last gasp effort always is. Kelley’s back line holds steady, and she knows exactly where the ball is going, hours of game tape has taught her that, and she tracks the target forward’s run into the box. The through ball slots perfectly into the narrow gap left by the center backs, but Kelley’s already on her mark, the timing of her tackle measured so perfectly in patience that she knows it’ll be clean before she even leaves her feet.

Kelley doesn’t expect the whistle, not even when the forward tumbles too easily over the top of her, but it comes, sharp and long, and it feels like the pitch drops out from under her in an instant. It’s heartbreak that transforms instantly into venom. 

The forward’s legs are still draped across her own, and she shoves them away with both hands, hurrying to her feet with a protest already filling her lungs. The ref point to the spot, with both hands so there’s no mistaking it, and Kelley’s suddenly in his face.

“That was clean, are you kidding me? Sir, I did not touch her,” Kelley’s voice is even, raised just enough, but her heart pounds loudly in her ears. “That was a dive.”

“Take a step back, five,” is her warning, but Kelley doesn’t move.

“Check your linesman, he was even with me. That was a clean tackle. I never touched her.,” Kelley catches the forward out of the corner of her eye, the ball spinning in her hand as she steps towards the penalty spot.

Kelley’s fists clench when her protesting goes ignored, anger reigniting the short fuse she thought she’d left behind in college. She remembers what it did to her then, that footnote on the end of her collegiate career, but it’s too late to let it go now.

“This is bullshit,” Kelley grits out, turning from the ref to plant her feet on the penalty spot just before the ball can be placed.

She narrows her eyes at the striker in front of her, “Hey, you fucking dove.”

Her keeper is at her side, pulling at her elbow with soft hands, but Kelley shrugs her off. 

“Five, step out of the box, now.”

“You can’t do this to them,” Kelley doesn’t move, her pulse still thumping wildly in her ears, anger flexing every muscle in her body so tightly that she’s planted in place.

And then there’s a hand at her back, and fingers that twist around a handful of the back of her jersey and pull just hard enough. It’s Kelley’s own move used against her by the one person who could get away with it. 

“Kell,” is all Alex says, and it’s enough to get Kelley’s feet to start moving from the spot, replaced by a ball that she knows is going in, because of hours and hours of game tape.

They’re met at the edge of the box by the referee, the wallet that hold his cards already in his hand, like he’s daring her. And Kelley makes one last bite.

“Do you get credit for an assist?”

The ref holds Kelley’s yellow card higher over his head than necessary.

She doesn’t watch the penalty kick, keeping her back to the goal and her eyes trained on the suddenly active sideline. The ball curls into the back of the net with a minute left to play, but Kelley’s night is over, her number suddenly red on the substitution board.

Kelley breezes past Rob, skipping the bench and heading straight to the locker room. She can hear his voice in the tunnel, the echo following her past the spot where the stadium lights start to disappear.

“Not your night, captain.”

*

“There’s no food,” Alex gripes, hours later, as she leans into their empty fridge.

They’ve had this conversation before.

“Order a pizza then,” Kelley says, distraction making her edgy as she scrolls through her phone, skipping over an email from Rob that just appeared in her inbox.

“Order a pizza at 10 pm?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do, go to the grocery store at 10 pm?”

“Not with you,” Alex shoots back, forcing Kelley to look up from her phone.

They’re stationed on opposite sides of the kitchen, leaning against counters with a matching hunch in the shoulders. Kelley’s bare feet stick to the tile beneath them, and the space around them feels smaller than ever.

“You’re the only one who’s allowed to be in a bad mood after a game?”

“No,” Alex says, the edge in her voice sharpened by Kelley’s dig. 

Kelley can hear the growl low in Alex’s stomach from across their divide, and it forces Alex to her side of the kitchen, and into the cabinet just over Kelley’s shoulder. Kelley doesn’t budge when the door swings open near her head.

“Rob shouldn’t have pulled you,” Alex’s voice echoes into the pantry, and it makes Kelley’s stomach twist to remember the way her boots sounded when they clicked through the tunnel alone, how overwhelming the quiet of the empty locker room had been.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Fine,” Alex says, dragging a box from the pantry and slamming the door shut behind her. The noise rings in Kelley’s ear, and the tension across her shoulders burns brighter.

Kelley’s still rooted into place, arms folded across her chest while she watches Alex move clumsily around the kitchen, filling a pot with water while she pretends to read the cooking instructions on a box of quinoa.

“That’s too much water,” Kelley says finally, crossing the kitchen to turn off the tap. “Do you want me to make it?”

“No,” Alex says, softer, like the rest of the day has finally caught up with her. “I hate quinoa.”

Kelley doesn’t say anything. Her feet are sticky on the tile when she moves to close the gap between them. Alex’s breath is across the bridge of Kelley’s nose when the box is pulled from her hand, and then it’s dropped to the ground, the corner of the box hitting the tile just right so it bursts open just as Kelley rocks up onto her toes to kiss Alex.

It isn’t gentle, or patient, Kelley’s hand already knotted around a fistful of Alex’s collar, the thin material stretching as Kelley uses it to pull her closer. When Kelley’s teeth scrape across her bottom lip, Alex pulls back first, confusion and a different kind of hunger knitted together in the crease between her eyebrows. Kelley’s hips pin Alex to the counter in a wordless invitation to a release they both need, and Alex accepts, leaning down to kiss Kelley harder than they’re both used to, a frantic mash of teeth and tongues, fingers curving around the waistband of team warmups.

There’s quinoa beneath her heel, and greedy hands beneath her shirt, and Kelley presses in harder, and harder, until Alex has to pull back again, this time for deep lungfuls of breath. Alex pushes off the counter then, Kelley wondering briefly if she’ll find a bruise along Alex’s lower back later, from hips pinned too hard against a countertop at just the wrong height, and then her feet are moving backwards and she’s getting kissed again. Alex makes quick work of her shirt, yanking it up and over Kelley’s head just as her back gets pressed into the refrigerator. Bare skin on cool metal with just enough force releases a gasp from her lungs that Alex doesn’t hesitate to swallow away.

The angry pinch between Kelley’s shoulders starts to fade, just enough, when Alex’s teeth drag across her collarbone.

*

Kelley wakes hours later to sweat still drying along the nape of her neck, and a gap in the bed that feels slightly bigger than the one from the night before. Alex is an arm’s length away, stretched out across the top of her pillow, the exposed skin of her back inviting a slow drag along her spine with the tip of Kelley’s finger. When Alex doesn’t wake, doesn’t even stir, Kelley checks the surf report.

Her toes are in the sand before the sun rises.

***

They lose again, and the gap between them in the bed grows a little more each night.

Kelley goes to sleep in more clothes than she’s used to, the long sleeves of a sweatshirt pulled down over her knuckles, her body suddenly not used to keeping warm on its own, without Alex curved around her side.

The hours they used to waste together in the mornings, coffee in bed, or fingers playing along curves, gradually becomes something else, spent somewhere else, Alex in running shoes and Kelley in the water. Their reunion at the breakfast table is quiet, but easier, as if sweat and saltwater have washed away enough to get them through a day of training. They drink coffee and share the newspaper Kelley buys from the corner store every morning, tossing aside the sports section that no longer gets opened. Kelley still tucks her feet up on the rung of Alex’s chair, but she works the crossword puzzle alone.

Their drives to training are quiet, tension growing in the knots in Kelley’s stomach, and flexed along Alex’s jaw line, all of it building the closer they get to training, until it all spills over onto the field. Nicknames get replaced by something more professional when they scrimmage in small-sided games, tackles are too eager, and Rob never steps in to tame the noticeable tension when Alex eggs on teammates’ runs with wild shouts that they’re faster than ‘her’. No one is faster than Kelley, and when she catches up to the young attackers, stripping the ball away cleanly to start a counter that catches Alex off guard, she’s rewarded with high fives from her rookie centerback, the one she’d wanted from the start.

The look she gives Alex over her shoulder says enough, but Kelley still pushes, “Faster than who, Morgan?”

Sometimes it’s Alex with a rare burst of confidence, charging at Kelley with the ball comfortably at her feet, a cut and a vicious lean that leaves Kelley scrambling at her back and clipping at her heels. The nights are almost better on the days those shots hit the back of the net. 

*

Alex scores her first goal wearing LA’s crest four months into their long season, but there is no celebration. It’s gritted teeth and an angry turn on her heel back to midfield, because Kansas City is already up by two, and the weight on her shoulders doesn’t feel any lighter.

Kelley kisses her just outside of the locker room later, pressing something that isn’t quite congratulations against her lips, then slower along the spot on her jaw that aches from an endless, angry clench.

“It won’t always be like this,” Kelley says against her skin.

It’s a gentle acknowledgment that she isn’t happy either, one that Alex has been waiting for, a hopeless reassurance that they’re both miserable, but just like her goal, it doesn’t bring the relief it seemed to promise.

The locker room is quiet when Kelley pushes through the door, and Alex thinks about Germany.

***

In the end, it’s a tie that finally breaks her.

The article had come with their careful morning routine, quiet cups of coffee and Kelley’s hair still smelling faintly like the ocean, but the tossed aside sports page isn’t ignored this time. It’s all laid out above the fold, an opinion piece written by a columnist Alex has never seen at training or in the post-game media line. He calls her ineffective and overpriced, with an attitude as poor as her form. There’s a box breaking down which options they could pick up in a trade for her, hard working veterans, quiet, steady, unselfish.

Alex reads most of it before Kelley can pull it away, her own eyes scanning the last paragraph, the one that questions whether or not married teammates are a hindrance to team chemistry.

Kelley drops the paper into the recycle bin, and pushes a pile of eggs around her plate while urging Alex to forget it.

It settles over both of them anyway, and it’s still there hours later in the volume and urgency of Kelley’s voice in the huddle, and the way she tugs at Alex’s jersey when Rob starts in on her, urging goals that Alex hasn’t been able to deliver all season.

“Just play,” Kelley urges, right before she takes off on a sprint to her backline.

*

They go up early on a goal from Alex, a laser into the upper ninety that no one could have stopped, and it’s like blood in the water for a doubted striker. She spends the next eighty minutes playing with a carefully controlled fury, covering more of the pitch than she ever has. Her legs are heavy and her lungs burn, but she still drops back deep into her own half to defend before racing to press high on goal.

Their season has been defined by the desperation for single, unattainable points, and Alex knows that won’t be enough now, not for her, or the team, or the journalist who wrote things about her she’d already known. She wants this more than anything.

The tying goal comes in the dying seconds of stoppage time, the ball dropping into the open space on the back post, right where an outside back should have been stationed on the corner kick.

Someone scrambles for the ball in the back of the net, but the whistle blows immediately, drowning out the angry curse Alex shouts towards her boots. 

There’s something in her then that aches to give up, and her eyes scans the field for Kelley, in the strange mix of happy opponents and worn down teammates, her pulse pounding in her temple. Alex finds her still tucked into the goal, a hand on the shoulder of the outside back who’s suddenly where she was supposed to be, leaned against the post with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes. Alex watches her urge the rookie off the post, a supportive arm draped around the younger players’ shoulder that steers her across the field and towards the locker room. 

“That goal has happened to all of us, you learn from it and you do your best to stop the next one, ok?” Kelley’s captain voice is warm, and Alex resists the urge to find comfort in words that aren’t meant for her. 

The rookie continues to the locker room without them, and Kelley is at Alex’s side, their toes on the painted strip of sideline.

“Why wasn’t she on the post?” Alex says, tremors of anger in a voice that’s too even.

“I don’t know,” Kelley breathes. Her hands are on her face, and the words are muffled through her fingers, “She got caught up in the last seconds. It happens. I don’t know.”

“Did you tell her to get on the back post? Why didn’t anyone see it was open? I mean, fuck, how does that happen?”

“They threw everyone into the box, and sent a quick ball in.” Kelley’s arms are at her side, then they’re folded tightly across her chest, and when Kelley speaks again it’s without the gentle tone of a captain. “I did the best I could, Alex. We all did.”

Alex doesn’t say anything, hyperaware of the remaining cameras trained on them now, the reporters lingering at the edge of the grass, and the buildup of anger that has her biting back all the things she knows she shouldn’t say. 

Their sighs come at the same time, Alex’s frustrated, Kelley’s defeated, and it’s a wordless stalemate on a place they used to connect so effortlessly. Kelley’s the first one to move, edging her feet over the touchline and towards the locker room, only making it a few steps before she reaches back for Alex, catching the bottom of her jersey between her fingers. Kelley gives the fabric a pull, a gentler one than Alex is used to these days, but the silent plea is still the same: relent.

Alex doesn’t budge, and Kelley walks to the locker room alone.

*

They make it home hours later than normal, after interviews in the press room where they both said too much, and a drive home where they didn’t speak at all. They drop their gear bags just inside the door, and Kelley tosses the car keys onto the corner with a little too much force, and they glide over the edge, falling into the drying rack full of dishes. 

Neither of them wince at the crash of glass and metal, both hardened by another bad night, and Kelley doesn’t look over her shoulder when she starts for their bedroom, “I’m going to bed.”

“That’s it?” Alex asks, her voice on the verge of a shout. 

Kelley stops immediately, turning to stare across the living room, the tight line of her mouth telling Alex not to press any farther, but she does anyway.

“Every week we lose another game, and every week I have to sit in the locker room and watch you try and make that ok for a bunch of kids. It’s not ok. None of this is ok. Rob is a joke, the stands are empty, and now people are writing articles about how much I suck. This is what I left Germany for?”

“Yes.”

Alex doesn’t have a chance to try and feel guilty about finally saying the angry words she’d held back on their field, the same one’s that have been in her head for months, because Kelley’s response is sharp and immediate, like she’d known all along.

“You left that cushy life in Germany for the exact same reasons I did, because it meant we got to come home and play together. Nobody forced your hand, and no one ever guaranteed that it was going to be easy starting this league. No one guaranteed us championships, or that you’d score every time you stepped on the pitch. The only guarantee I had when I came back was that I’d get to play behind you every game.”

“You don’t get it,” Alex hits back, but it rings false to both of them.

“I do get it. You think I don’t remember what it’s like to live life as a fragile forward? You think I like to lose day after day? This isn’t my dream season either. I’m frustrated, and I’m angry, but I’m still here. I’m still with the team working my ass off in every practice. I don’t get to quit on them. I wouldn’t quit on them. But you’ve been mentally checked out of this team since Annika blew out her knee in that last week of preseason. And maybe I should have stepped in earlier, but honestly, Alex, I thought you’d be better than this.”

“Hey,” Alex starts again, but these things have been in Kelley’s head for months, too, and they feel more earned than anything that’s spilled from Alex’s mouth.

“You’re supposed to be by my side, we’re supposed to be building something good here. This is our home, Alex, this is where we always wanted to end up.” 

The sharp edges of Kelley’s voice start to soften, worn down by this night, and this season. By Alex.

“I fell in love with you in this city, and I’m so proud to wear its crest over my heart every game. This place means something to me, I wish it meant something to you too.”

When Alex looks at Kelley then, at her face twisted up in sober disappointment, there’s a pang of regret so sharp and sudden in her chest that it forces her backwards by a few shaky steps.

There are a hundred different apologies rapidly forming a lengthy queue in her head, anything to change the way Kelley is looking at her now, but when she finally manages to speak, her voice is small, and desperate, before it catches on the second syllable and goes unfinished.

“Kell…”

But Alex’s words are at Kelley’s back, and she wonders for a minute if she should follow her this time, flashing back to hours earlier and standing alone at midfield until her legs started to ache, and then the door to their bedroom clicks shut softly from down the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

Alex wakes to the sun across her face, but it’s from the wrong angle, and warming the wrong cheek.

It’s still too early to put it all together right away, and Alex considers a gentle complaint to Kelley for forgetting to close the curtains again, but when she rolls over there’s a tv remote pressing into her back and she remembers where she is. Her feet dangle over the edge of the living room couch they’d paid too much for.

“Shit,” she says to no one, and it echoes through the empty apartment.

There’s a note for her on the coffee table, and it isn’t until she reaches for it that Alex notices the blanket tucked around her shoulders. It’s Kelley’s, a tattered mess of worn fabric from her childhood that she swears still smells like the place she’d grown up, sugar maples and her mother’s soft perfume. It had taken up permanent residence over the armchair in their bedroom, Kelley’s fingers playing over it sometimes on bad days, and now it’s wrapped around her stubborn wife.

Alex pulls the blanket higher up over her shoulders, the frayed edges ghosting under her chin, and then she looks over the note. It’s a single sentence, ‘went to training early’, but it’s missing the familiar, sloppily drawn hearts with ends that never close, the ones that had started as a joke on early mornings when the waves were too good to pass up, but now seem so important in their absence. 

Alex pulls the blanket all the way over her head then, and she takes a few more minutes beneath it before she forces herself up.

***

They’re twenty minutes into a training session that Alex was thirty minutes early to before Kelley even says her name.

She runs faster, shoots harder, and offers up praise to struggling teammates easier than anyone else on the field. Alex knows it’s too sudden a change to not seem forced, but she isn’t patient enough for subtlety, not when it concerns the way Kelley looks at her.

It works eventually, with a smart pass through traffic, finding an open teammate instead of forcing a shot, an assist instead of a goal, and Kelley’s voice is clear from the other end of the field before the ball is in the back of the goal.

“Good, Alex.”

*

After training Alex waits for Kelley in the quieter hallway outside of their locker room. There are nerves in her gut, and in the fingers that twist, and twist, around strands of wet hair, and when Kelley steps out into the quiet hallway, Alex lets loose a long exhale when she shoves off the wall to shuffle towards her.

“Hey,” is what she manages, soft and startlingly tentative, her eyes dropping suddenly from Kelley’s down to her shoes.

Alex can hear the half-smile in Kelley’s, “hey” and her head shoots back up.

“Can we talk?” Alex’s hands reach out across the gap between them, her fingers toying with the fabric of Kelley’s shirt before she’s brave enough to slip her hand into Kelley’s.

Kelley doesn’t get a chance to answer, the two of them interrupted by important-sounding footsteps echoing down the hallway and towards them, but she doesn’t shake away Alex’s hand when they both turn to look. 

The club’s owner is trailed by the general manager, and when they stop in front of Kelley and Alex they’re both sporting nervous grins that Alex doesn’t love. 

“Alex, do you mind if we borrow Kelley for a minute?”

“Uh, sure,” Alex answers, and Kelley squeezes her hand before it falls away.

“I’ll just meet you at home?” Kelley says over her shoulder as she starts to follow behind the two men.

Alex shakes her head, a different type of nerves settling in now, “I’ll wait.” 

*

A few minutes turns into an hour, and Alex is working out a cramp in her calf from nervous foot tapping when Kelley finds her later in the locker room.

“Come with me,” Kelley says, just after she crosses the empty room, reaching down for Alex’s hand to pull her to her feet. There’s too much urgency in her voice, and Alex follows her without question.

There’s a long stretch of silence that Alex doesn’t try to break as she’s dragged out of the locker room and down the empty hallway where their running shoes squeak on freshly polished linoleum. When they push through the double doors and into the late morning air, Alex hears Kelley exhale.

“What’s going on?” Alex asks finally, long after she’s been ushered into the passenger seat of Kelley’s car.

“They’re firing Rob,” Kelley says, her eyes locked on Alex and the way her mouth drops open. “I think they might be doing it right now.”

“Oh, shit.”

“That’s not all. That meeting- they asked me to take over the team, at least for the rest of the season, like Pearcie did in New Jersey that one time. They want me as player-coach.”

There’s a waver in Kelley’s voice, like she doesn’t want to be saying any of it, suddenly unsure of the reaction her wife might have.

“What did you tell them?” Alex’s voice is even, but her wide eyes betray her.

“I told them I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Do you want to do it?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“You should do it.” Alex angles in her seat so she’s facing Kelley, and her response is firm.

“Al, this season has been a nightmare for us, as teammates and as partners, and I don’t know that this is the best thing for us right now. I think we need to seriously talk about this. They gave me a few days.”

Kelley’s phone buzzes in the cup holder between them, and it’s enough to distract her from this thing she isn’t ready to think about.

“Hey,” Alex says, reaching across the center console then to slip her fingers around Kelley’s wrist. “This season was a nightmare because of Rob, and because of me. You were the one person who held it all together. This team loves you, and they respect you, Kelley. We can make this work.”

Alex’s eyes are brighter than they’ve been in months, and Kelley lets go of a long-held breath that fills the car with a heavy quiet.

“We probably shouldn’t make this decision in a parking lot. Can we leave your car here, go home?”

“Yeah, let’s go home.”

*

At home they crawl into bed, still in team gear, their shoes kicked off and scattered across the floor. This is where they’ve always been their best, their quiet partnership in their safest space, curled up beneath sheets and blankets that smell like them, that faint scent of familiar detergent that had always signaled home. Alex pushes her face into the corner of her pillow and breathes deep, still aware of the ache in her chest that came from waking up alone, and so determined not to feel it again. 

The afternoon sun casts shadows across Kelley’s face while she thinks too loudly, and Alex watches her from across the gap in the bed that’s still there. It’s different than before though, the distance feeling comfortable, easy, like they know it’s almost over.

“Tell me all your reasons not to do this.” Alex is still staring, studying her wife’s profile through heavy-lidded eyes that are accustomed to post-training naps.

“I don’t think you’re giving enough thought to how much this will change things with us. It’ll mean longer hours after training for me. We’d have to drive separately every day.”

“We already did that today.” Alex reminds her, and Kelley sighs.

“And I hated it.”

“We drove separately for the wrong reasons this morning. It won’t be like that again.”

“Who’s going to cook dinner every night when I’m figuring out lineups and watching game tape? And that’s the other thing, the biggest thing. We never wanted to bring work home. Now it’ll be here full time for the next three months.”

“You do know that I can feed myself, right?”

Off Kelley’s look, Alex smiles and moves to shrink the gap between them, her head coming to rest on the corner of Kelley’s pillow.

“I’m scared of what this season did to us,” Kelley admits finally, in a whisper so soft that Alex almost doesn’t catch it. “And I’m scared that coaching you will only make it worse.”

Her delicate words settle like stones in Alex’s chest, the weight of them nearly sinking her into the mattress, and it’s quiet in their bedroom.

Alex doesn’t know what to say. All the unspoken apologies from the night before push to break free, but she’s suddenly terrified that they’ll only sound hollow, even though they’re so desperately true. So instead she just says, “It won’t.” with one hand pressed to the ache in her heart, making her words look like the earnest pledge that they are.

“Alex.” Kelley’s words still come out like a sigh.

“Do you want to coach this team?”

“Yes,” Kelley answers, in the sure and steady tone Alex was hoping for.

“Then you should do it.”

“What if I have to bench you? Or what if you go months without a goal again? I’ll have to talk about whatever your struggles are to the press, and in meetings with the other coaches. I’ll have to make decisions about your career that you might not like. What then?”

Alex’s fingers move to slip along Kelley’s jaw, the flinch away she was worried about never coming, and her hand settles along Kelley’s neck, reassuring and warm.

“I’ve trusted you with my career since, like, our third week of dating,” and the quiet smile it draws from Kelley pulls Alex farther into the shrinking gap between them. “I know this stuff can’t be fixed overnight, with us, or with the team, but the decision you’re trying to make is a step in the right direction for all of it. I don’t want to be the person, or the player, that I let myself become here anymore, and I can’t find my way back without you. We all need you. And I can’t promise that it’ll always be perfect, but I’ll work so hard to get it right this time, Kelley. You deserve this, and we can make it work.”

Kelley’s head turns towards Alex then, before the rest of her body follows, their legs tangling together beneath the warm sheets. Her searching fingers find Alex’s hand in the narrow space between them, and Kelley holds tight.

***

Kelley is the one to tell the team, one of the few requests she’d made before signing her contract.

She herds them all into the film room, so close to the start of training that it’s a symphony of studs clicking against the concrete floors, and then it’s dead silence when Kelley stands alone at the front of the room. 

“Rob’s gone.” 

Kelley pushes on through the scattered whispers, and a sea of unsure rookie faces, “The front office asked me to take over coaching for the rest of the season.”

The room goes quiet again, with the exception of a small voice from the back row, the ageless right mid who’d spent years in the semi-pro league before being brought up, who says, “thank god” and earns a shoulder bump from the person sitting next to her. It sets off a chain of applause that Kelley has to calm, her sheepish grin finding Alex in the back row, clapping along with everyone else.

“Ok, you guys are on board,” Kelley’s grin is bright, and wide with relief. “Listen, I know this has been a hard season, and we’ve all just been trying to get through it, but now we turn it around, and we go out with our heads held high. That means throwing everything we have at every team, and disrupting the hell out of those standings along the way. And we do that together, and we start today. So let’s get to work.”

*

Kelley’s team already sounds different in the tunnel that leads to training.

***

“Al, can I talk to you for a sec?”

There’s a toothbrush hanging from her mouth when Alex pokes her head out of the bathroom.

“When you’re done,” Kelley grins.

Alex spits, rinses, then spends another five minutes finishing an elaborate nighttime routine that involves a lot of flossing. When she’s finished she doesn’t climb into bed next to Kelley, instead settling cross-legged on top of the comforter, and looking the slightest bit hesitant at the way Kelley is sitting up against the pillows.

“I’m not gonna start you against Portland on Saturday.”

Kelley says it with as much confidence as necessary, but she can feel herself falter just enough with the way Alex tries to quickly hide how her face falls.

“You’re too far in your own head right now. You’re frustrated and you’ve been playing with a bad attitude for a long time. Take it as a chance to step back and regroup. You need this, and I have to do it.”

“Do I get to play at all?” Alex asks, her eyes focused suddenly on the dark bruise already forming along her knee from a clash at training.

“It depends on how the game goes, but yeah, you’ll probably see some time.” There’s a pause, and then, “Are you ok with this? I don’t know if I should even be asking you that. I don’t ask anyone else if they’re ok with sitting on the bench. Are you ok, in general, with what’s happening?”

“I trust your decision-making,” Alex says carefully.

“Al.”

“Kelley.”

But it comes back a little too quickly, and Alex exhales, “I just thought you were talking figuratively when you said you might have to bench me.”

“I was not.”

“What do I tell reporters if they ask why I’m sitting?” Alex asks, still not looking at Kelley. 

“You tell them the truth.”

Alex’s nod is barely there, but her voice is strong, “Ok.”

“It’s just one game for now, and we’ll see how you do.” Kelley’s fingers reach out for Alex but they’re too far apart, and it’s a barely there touch to the knee before she pulls her hand back.

“Kelley, I get it. It’s ok,” Alex leans forward then, pressing her knees into the mattress to reach Kelley for a kiss that almost lingers. “Don’t stay up too late on this stuff, Coach.”

Alex shifts to climb under the covers, curling blankets around her shoulders and fidgeting until she feels settled in, then she stills, and sleep comes as quickly as it always does for her. Kelley still sits on top of the comforter, her outstretched legs covered in notes and plays that she ignores.

*

She wakes to a spill of papers and a thin layer of sweat beneath her clothes, and the long sleeved shirt she’d spent too many nights going to sleep in is suddenly unnecessary with the way Alex’s body is angled around her again, warm, and solid, and right there.

***

It’s an adjustment at first, learning to watch the game unfold in front of her while sandwiched between the backup keeper and a veteran midfielder whose clap is as loud as her verbal encouragement. 

Alex isn’t the loudest teammate on the bench in that first half against Portland, and in the beginning she doesn’t say much at all from her perch on the literal edge of her seat, chin in her hand as she just observes. She collects silent notes on passing lanes that don’t work, and how shaky Portland’s keeper is under too much pressure with the ball at her feet. And she makes careful note of the way Kelley confidently rallies her back line after they go down a goal too early, and the steely determination that settles along the tops of their shoulders.

At halftime Alex stations herself between the two starting forwards, Kelsey, and the one who’d replaced her in the lineup, Aubrey from Duke who hadn’t played a minute all season. Alex opens her hand and drags her finger across her palm, illustrating runs that will expose the gaps in Portland’s defense, and pointing out Kelsey’s defender’s fatal flaw, an obvious indecisiveness that is begging to be exposed by her speed. They stay that way, three forwards in quiet conference, until Kelley calls them into the huddle. 

When they meet eyes over their team, the nod Alex gets from her captain, her coach, feels like the beginning of that restart she was promised.

*

Alex gets fifteen minutes on the pitch, and enough attention from Portland’s defense that Kelsey is free enough to slip one past the keeper.

*

It’s a loss that still stings, because that’s how she’ll always be wired, but it’s a different walk off the pitch when she isn’t staring down at her boots. Kelley’s arm slips low around her waist just as they step into the tunnel, and her voice is warm with praise.

“Just like that, Al.”

***

On the field they right themselves easily.

Kelley’s line works the way she always knew it could, high-pressing and confident, her right back doing her best work with miles more freedom. Kelley runs the flanks with renewed energy too, because on the end of every perfectly weighted through ball is Alex, the two of them so quickly in sync again that sometimes Kelley can hit her in stride without really looking, and it makes their supporters go wild.

The goals come slowly, and then they come steadily.

*

Off the field their reconnection is slower.

When Alex curls into Kelley at night it sometimes feels like the way she had clung to her in those uncertain months before Germany, when the threat of distance would eventually become real, and massive, and unavoidable. It’s harder for them to reconcile what this distance had been, an arm’s length gap in the bed, and too many mornings spent alone.

Their steps forward are careful and patient, because there is nothing more important than finding their way back. 

Alex’s apologies are pressed into Kelley’s skin just before sleep, quiet lips against temples and cheekbones and the cotton that covers her shoulder. They’re in the pressure of her palm at the small of Kelley’s back while they dance around each other in their cramped bathroom on mornings before training, or the way her hand slips over Kelley’s halfway through a long flight home.

Kelley accepts each one, because Alex needs her to, and because she owes a few of her own, for calculated digs and patience that was too easily worn thin. Kelley is gentle touches and softer words, almost letting dinner burn one night when Alex’s hand slips under her shirt and across warm skin for what feels like the first time in too long. 

Her playlists are lighter through the speakers on the rare days they drive to training together, littered with her wife’s favorite tracks, and punctuated by Kelley’s bright laugh when Alex tells her the rookies have upgraded her nickname to something familiar, “Mrs. Coach." It all reminds her of late nights in her old office at the high school, aimless spinning in her desk chair while she recapped her day, Alex’s voice over the phone making whole body warm from thousands of miles away. 

Kelley’s fingers take to twisting through Alex’s hair when she curls around her each night, and they start to fall back together.

***

Tobin and New York come to LA and give them as much trouble as they were expecting, but they still grin their way through a post-game dinner with their friend before limping home to stretch out on the couch and ice sore bodies and bruised egos.

Kelley’s shins are already dotted with reminders of her battles with Tobin, and Alex’s free hand traces their fuzzy outlines. Her other hand, and its frozen fingers, keeps an ice pack to the tender ankle Kelley has propped up in Alex’s lap.

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” Alex asks into the quiet, and the game slides off of them easily.

Kelley doesn’t look away from the interior design magazine she’s flipping through, “To travel back in time to take back that nutmeg Tobin got on me.”

“I was thinking about taking you on a trip, but time travel might be hard on such late notice,” off the soft laugh behind the magazine, Alex keeps going. “You’ve got a bye week on your birthday, that’s three days off, four if the coach is feeling charitable. We should put it to good use.”

“We didn’t do anything crazy for your birthday.”

“Well, I wasn’t turning 30.”

Kelley drops the magazine onto her chest, and narrows her eyes at Alex, “You just wanted to say that out loud.”

“Come on,” Alex grins. “Anything you want.”

Kelley thinks on it for a beat, her legs crossing at the ankle in Alex’s lap, and a sly smile curving her mouth when she’s made her decision.

“Ok, I got it. I want my three favorite S’s.” Kelley says with a grin that makes Alex warm.

Kelley’s hand shoots high above her head, and she counts off her choices with an exaggerated flick of her fingers.

“I want sleep. I want surfing. And I want so, so much -” Alex’s eyebrows raise with hopeful expectations that quickly, playfully, dashed, “sleep, still. Just a lot of sleep.”

“Ok.” Alex nods.

“And probably some sex, if you play your cards right.” Kelley bites at her grin, and the serious way that Alex nods in reply.

“Noted.”

“Home with you for four days,” Kelley says, her voice warmer than before. “That’s all I want for my birthday.”

“Done.” Alex nods, waking her phone to cancel the reservations she’d made weeks ago for far up the coast.

*

The rest of the team scatters quickly after one last training session, bound for flights across the country, and roommate road trips built around theme parks and food. Kelley and Alex’s small world in LA feels like a ghost town all at once, and it’s everything Kelley had wanted.

They shut off their phones and sleep greedily on their first day, limbs wild across the mattress for as long as their bodies will allow. In the late afternoon they drag themselves into the living room for a change of scenery, and a stream of movies they never finish. Alex sleeps, and Kelley shifts, her slow journey across the sectional eventually ending with her stretched out across Alex, the heartbeat beneath her ear teasing her back to sleep.

*

Two days in, they’re well-rested and restless. 

Rain spoils their early morning run, and they hole up in the living room instead, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a deck of cards that had been banished to the back of a desk drawer months earlier. 

Alex spends twenty minutes teaching Kelley an overly complicated card game she used to play as a kid, and Kelley takes ten minutes to master it. They spend hours alternating wins, with Alex keeping careful tally in a notebook that had appeared sometime after the fourth game.

“Ok, next game wins.” Kelley says through a yawn, trying hard to make a sentence that has always gotten them in trouble seem casual.

Alex nods, and minutes later lays down a series of suspiciously bad hands. The game ends quietly, without thrown cards, and slammed doors, or anyone on the end of a pointed accusation of cheating.

Kelley watches Alex notch the winning tally under her name, and her eyes narrow.

“Did you let me win?”

“No.” Alex’s response is more aggressive than the way she’d just finished their card game.

“Alex.”

“Ok, but it’s your birthday weekend.”

Kelley thinks of Alex curled around her at night, and how delicate they still sometimes feel in quiet moments, and she grabs the deck to shuffle another round. 

“We have never let each other win anything, and we aren’t starting now. I want to kick your ass fair and square.”

‘One more round’ turns into three, and when Kelley wins fair and square, Alex tallies the earned win under her name before ripping the score sheet out of the notebook, crumpling it into a tight, angry ball, and pitching it at Kelley. The wad of paper bounces off her chest, and Kelley doesn’t tame her laugh.

*

Their last morning falls on Kelley’s actual birthday, and she’s up long before the sun, slipping into a swimsuit after checking over the surf report. She’s silent in their bedroom, letting Alex have a few extra minutes before she ambushes her with an early morning wakeup she’s not expecting.

There’s mint on her breath when she leans in to kiss Alex awake, cold lips on warm cheeks that make Alex burrow deeper into the blankets with a grunt of disapproval.

“Al,” Kelley whispers at the quiet mound of comforter, “It’s my birthday, and I want to surf.”

When Alex only nods against the pillow in response, Kelley pushes aside the blanket over her face and presses her lips against the curve of Alex’s ear, “Come on, the waves are going off. Keep me company on the shore?”

There is only more stirring, but not enough, and Kelley’s hand slips beneath the edge of the blanket to trace cool lines over warm skin.

“Al,” Kelley drawls, her voice as lazy and drawn out as their weekend has been. “Komm bitte?”

There’s a playful scoff from beneath the sheets, and then they’re pushed away from their spot over Alex’s face. Her eyes are barely open, and bed head has taken its toll on the long locks that are fanned out across her pillow, but Kelley’s overwhelmed by the sight of her all the same.

“German still only sounds good when it’s coming from those lips.” Alex’s voice is morning husky while she stretches sleep from her body with an arch in her back, before pulling Kelley to lay across her, her voice softer, sleepier against her skin, “Happy birthday, ehefrau.”

“Danke.”

*

Their Sunday morning routine in the brief stretch of time before the season had started had always been the same. An empty beach and open waves, Alex lingering in the coffee shop across the boardwalk from Kelley’s preferred stretch of sand, drinking coffee and checking emails before catching Kelley on her last few sets

She doesn’t linger now, because of birthdays and the last two months. Alex gets her coffee to-go, a pink sprinkled donut tucked away carefully in the pocket of her jacket, and she settles onto the sand, and she watches.

Alex has seen her in the water plenty of times, but never without the distraction of Candy Crush draining the battery on her phone, or accidental naps brought on by the perfect angle of the sun. Kelley is serene on her board, an easy drop in her shoulders while she floats in the ocean waiting for the wave she wants, and it feels like the exact opposite of the tenacious way she carries herself on the pitch.

Alex can’t look away, even when Kelley’s forced in by dying waves, her board tucked under her arm with the sun catching on the drops of saltwater that cling to her chin and the end of her nose. Kelley stakes her board into the sand and drops onto the blanket next to Alex, curling into the towel automatically draped around her shoulders.

“I’m starving,” Kelley says, a hint of hopefulness in her voice, and her eyes go wide when Alex produces the donut from her pocket.

Kelley takes too big of a bite, sighing through a mouthful of sugar before leaning over to kiss appreciation against Alex’s cheek.

“You’re the best beach bunny out here.”

“Thanks, brah,” Alex grins, her toes buried in the sand at the edge of the blanket. “I got you a coffee, too, but it’s probably cold by now.”

“It’s ok. I was just in the zone today. The waves were so good.” Kelley reaches for the coffee, wincing at the first cool sip, but soldiering on anyway.

“You looked really good out there. Like, really good. Your surfer babe thing is working extra for me today.”

“Yeah?” Kelley grins, leaning into Alex’s side.

“Oh, definitely.”

Kelley laughs into another bite of her breakfast, and the sound of it is familiar, and missed, like coming home after a long time away. There’s a quiet that settles over them then, the lapping waves mixing with Kelley’s soft slurps of lukewarm coffee, and Alex still can’t look away.

Kelley can feel eyes on her, and when she turns there’s a shy smirk on her face, “What?”

“I missed you so much. And I’m so in love with you, Kelley, still, and always, and I’m so sorry for-”

It all tumbles out so fast, weeks and months of stowed away words bubbling over into something real and true and unstoppable until Kelley cuts her off with a kiss, her neck craning for an even touch while they shift on the sand. It’s all achingly patient at first, slow kisses peppered across Alex’s lips like Kelley is still eagerly trying to memorize this part of her all these years later. There is pink frosting on the corner of her lips, and saltwater on her skin, and the dam finally breaks with a hitch in Alex’s breath. 

When they barrel through their front door, pinned together and staggeringly uncoordinated, it’s a cyclone of sand and discarded clothes tearing through their living room, marking an urgently traveled path to their bedroom, punctuated occasionally by Alex’s frustrated cursing at Kelley’s uncooperative wetsuit. She doesn’t need help stilling her hands this time, foiled again by Kelley’s clothes until she reminds herself to breathe, her fingers trailing through Kelley’s damp hair a few times, until they’re able to travel steady down her back and tug easily at the zipper that curves along her spine. 

*

Syd calls hours later, for a birthday wish that’s just an excuse to poke fun at her age, and Kelley’s voice is thick with sleep.

“Damn, grandma. Are you still in bed? It’s like, noon there.”

“Back in bed, not still in bed,” Kelley corrects.

The other line is silent for a beat, before it’s filled with a wicked laugh, and Kelley can feel the curve of Alex’s smile against her bare skin.

***

They start to pick up points with gradual frequency. It’s a steady stream of ties, and a few close losses, but they feel hard-fought with team goals that build seamlessly out of the backfield, and an unceasing pressure that keeps their opponents on their heels until the final whistle. Other teams start to learn that Alex is finally finding her form, and that Kelsey isn’t far behind.

In post-game interviews Kelley credits the team’s trust in each other as the reason for their late-season surge. She calls them ‘relentless’, and the word eventually makes its way to the whiteboard in the locker room, and then it’s everywhere, scrawled across shin guards, and wrist tape, and the bottoms of boots in thick, permanent ink.

They go into the last months of the season wearing their new identity as a literal badge, and when their second win drags them within a point of getting out of last place they celebrate like it’s a stoppage time win in the playoffs they’ve long been out of the running for. 

When the reporters ask her about the emergence of Kelsey and Alex’s on-field partnership, Kelley’s grin says more than her words.

“I think you’d have to ask them about that. They’ve put in a lot of work together recently, and I think they just figured out their own way.”

Kelley doesn’t tell them about Alex and Kelsey on her living room couch too early on a Saturday morning, watching Premier League matches with bowls of cereal propped up in their laps, or how Alex traces off the ball movement of strikers with the end of her spoon while Kelsey watches with nods and a scrunched up nose. 

She doesn’t tell the reporters any of that, but sometimes she leans over the back of the couch to kiss Alex quick while the rookie hollers at a bad call.

***

It isn’t always perfect.

In Boston Alex makes it seventy-nine minutes before Kelley gives the nod to an assistant to have her pulled. Alex doesn’t catch it right away, but when she sees Aubrey from Duke warming up on the sidelines she’s in Kelley’s space while they wait for an incoming corner. 

“You’re pulling me already?”

“You had eighty minutes. You’re done, Alex.” Kelley doesn’t look her way, her eyes focused on the forward in front of her, the one with Kelley’s arm braced into her back.

The corner floats in too slow, and it’s an easy clear, but Alex still hasn’t dropped her protest.

“I’ve got one more.” 

It’s an empty promise on the jog out of the box.

“No, you don’t. And they’re all over you back there. It’s not worth the injury risk, or the card you have coming. You’re sitting.”

Alex’s number glows red on the sideline, and the glance she gives, narrowed eyes tossed pointedly back over her shoulder on the jog off, doesn’t go unnoticed by Kelley, or the reporters that line the field.

*

“You looked pretty unhappy on the bench after getting subbed off with your team down by two. Did you disagree with the substitution?”

Alex is twitchy in front of the line of media. She considers the question, trying to figure out on the fly just how much trouble she’s looking to get into, before cocking an eyebrow and leaning towards the microphone.

“At the end of the day it’s the coach’s decision, and she had to make what she thought was the right call.” Alex shrugs then, an attempt at nonchalance that’s anything but. She licks her lips, and shuffles her feet, her classic tells for the stubbornness that’s blooming in her chest, “She’s the boss, and my job is to just do what she tells me, even when I don’t love it.”

Alex sidesteps the pile of reporters then, and her attempt at a mic drop is ruined by the sight of Kelley just off to the side, and well within earshot.

*

On the flight home there’s a rookie in Alex’s usual seat next to Kelley. 

She slinks into the aisle seat in their row, and there’s enough awkward silence floating between the three of them that the young midfielder offers to switch seats with them before they’re at cruising altitude.

“No,” is the synchronized response from either side of her.

*

On the drive home Alex considers an apology, but decides against it, waiting for Kelley’s first move instead. Kelley is quiet from the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the glow of her phone while she scrolls with an intense determination that makes Alex nervous.

Alex’s interview cuts through the silence of the car without warning, her words sounding harsher than she’d remembered through the speakers of Kelley’s phone.

It’s a quick clip, exactly the sound bite they’d wanted after catching her tense posture on the bench.

Alex lets her play the whole thing without interrupting, and when it’s over her voice is soft, “I may have said things I shouldn’t have in the heat of the moment. I apologize.” And then, her voice lower, a barely audible mumble, “But I still think I could have gotten one.”

They roll to a stop at a light and Alex looks across the car to meet eyes with Kelley, who replays the clip without breaking eye contact.

_“At the end of the day it’s the coach’s decision…”_

“Ok, ok. You’re right. You are alway right.” Alex’s words are playful, and then spoken through a grin when she realizes that Kelley’s face is glowing red from the traffic light, and maybe a little bit from her. 

“In my defense though, this did always go both ways. Sometimes I have to talk about you to the press.”

Kelley presses play on the video again, and Alex’s throaty laugh is almost loud enough to drown it out.

“Ok, shit, stop playing that. You were right for pulling me, I know it. I’m sorry.”

Alex reaches for the phone and Kelley allows it to be pulled from her hands, unleashing a smug grin when it’s tossed into the backseat.

“I was just about to send that to your mom.”

Alex snorts, “I’m sure she’s already seen it, and I’m sure I’ll get a phone call about it tomorrow.”

Alex’s hand reaches to slip across Kelley’s thigh, and there’s pressure in her fingertips as the street light changes. The car glows green, and they move forward.

***

A month before the start of the playoffs a centerback in Portland breaks her foot.

Kelley knows what’s coming, she’s heard the talk during meetings with the front office, but it isn’t until 24 hours later, when she’s called into her GM’s office just after training, that she lets her stomach drop. Her tapping foot and fresh-from-training boots leave bits of dirt on the pristine carpet of his office, and she’s staring down at it when he starts in.

“Portland approached us about a trade.”

*

“It’ll be ok,” is Alex’s vague promise from her perch on the edge of their bed.

Kelley paces the length of their bedroom just in front of her, a track of footprints worn into the carpet already, their bedroom so achingly quiet that Alex can hear the rumble of the dishwasher from down the hall.

“Hey,” Alex says softly, her hand reaching out for Kelley on her next pass by. “Come sit with me.”

The fingers on her wrist stop her instantly, and it’s an easy tug from Alex to get Kelley settled onto the edge of the bed right next to her. An exhale drops her shoulders and Alex presses a kiss to the hard ridge of Kelley’s knuckles on the hand that she still has a grip on.

“This sucks.”

“I know,” Alex says, Kelley’s hand warm in hers.

“Being traded during the season was always my worst fear when I was coming up, to just be uprooted from a team that feels like home for something completely new. And now I have to do that exact thing to someone else, to a kid, and one I like so much.”

Alex shifts to kiss the spot just below Kelley’s ear, lingering until she hears a soft sigh.

“I just don’t want her to think that we didn’t want her after everything she did for us this season.”

“Portland’s one of the best teams in the league, they might win the whole thing, and when they had to fill a gap in their roster Emily was the first player they thought of. Everybody wants her, Kelley, that kid you handpicked from the draft when no one else had a clue. And she knows we want her too, she’s just destined for bigger things than we can offer her right now.”

Kelley doesn’t say anything. She lets Alex’s words settle over her, peeling away at the stubborn guilt that Kelley wants to hold onto until Emily wins that championship, on a new team that’s at least started to feel a little bit like home. Her fingers find a loose thread along the hem of Alex’s favorite sleep shirt, the one with the faded Bundesliga team crest she never played for resting just over her heart. 

“She’s my favorite.” Kelley admits quietly, twisting the thread around the tip of her finger until it snaps. 

“I know, but this is a good move for her,” Alex promises. “And you know what they say, if you love something you should set it free.”

There’s a long pause while Kelley waits for the second half of a quote that isn’t really applicable, but it never comes, and she bites at the smile forming at the corner of her mouth, still endlessly charmed by Alex’s sporadic thoughts.

“Al, I think there’s maybe more to that quote.”

“I know that, I just didn’t want to bum you out with the second half of it, because everything’s gonna be fine.”

Alex’s smile is soft and Kelley loves her so easily. She kisses Alex on the edge of their bed then, sweet pecks against the corners of lips that grow softer as her shoulders start to uncurl, until Kelley pulls away just enough wrap her arms tightly around Alex’s neck.

Kelley’s words are mumbled into the tattered collar of her wife’s favorite shirt, “I couldn’t do this without you.”

“You could,” Alex’s assurance is automatic, her arm curved around Kelley’s ribs so she can feel every breath. “It’s why I love you.”

***

With weeks left in their dwindling season talk eventually drifts towards how they’ll spend their offseason. 

Loan offers come from their former German clubs. Alex turns down Bayern quickly and offers to follow Kelley to Essen so easily that she almost considers it, before turning it down later with a kiss over breakfast, citing qualifiers and the possibility of another season coaching for the small high school a city over. Alex slurps at her cereal and offers to carry the team’s water bottles, and Kelley kisses her again.

They don’t talk about the search for a new coach that’s already underway at their own club because it still feels strangely bittersweet. In moments of selfish honesty, whispered words to her wife under the safe tent of bedsheets, Kelley admits how much she misses what it was like to just play, when teammates were just teammates, and she wasn’t missing dinner with her wife at least four times a week. She’d done what was asked of her, rallying a team and saving a season, and now she was ready to trust that someone else could do the same. 

She comes to the decision quickly but thoughtfully, the ongoing theme for their impending offseason, and her lingering guilt fades when she’s given a chance to look over the list of coaching candidates the front office had made just in case, all proven names with massive experience.

It leaves her hopeful for the next season, and that’s what she tells every journalist who asks, at the gala they had to sacrifice a date night for.

“The end of our season has been a really solid turnaround, and I’m proud of what we’ve done together, and I think we’re all really hopeful that we can carry this momentum into next season,” is what she says into every microphone thrust her way on the red carpet, over and over again in a tone that never dulls because she means it.

What does eventually dull her tone to a slow, warm drawl are frequent trips to the open bar, and then eventually, the sight of Alex leaned against it. The dim lights of the ballroom still manage to catch along all of the best angles of Alex’s black dress, and Kelley swallows hard at her luck. 

There’s a man in too sharp of a suit at Alex’s elbow, holding down a one-sided conversation while she tries in vain to flag down the busy bartender. Kelley’s close enough to catch the way Alex twists at the wedding ring on her finger, and how easily the gesture goes ignored by the man beside her. Kelley’s hand slips low around Alex’s waist when she finally reaches her.

“Hey,” Kelley mumbles, cooly disrupting the space between the two of them to slide her empty glass onto the bar, and not bothering to look anywhere but the curve of Alex’s lips. “Want to get out of here?”

Alex’s nod is immediate, her bottom lip clenched between her teeth to hide a wayward smile, but the blush across her cheeks is unmistakable. Kelley’s grip at her hips is a little tighter as she starts to pull them away from the bar, and the man in too sharp of a suit let’s out an ‘ohh’ that seems to last forever.

Kelley’s laugh is tossed back over her shoulder at him, “Later, dude.”

*

The hickey blooming pink along the slope of Kelley's neck is the reason they’re camped out at the counter of an In N Out in fancy dresses just after midnight.

Alex had caught sight of the glowing sign from the back seat of their hired car just as Kelley was putting distance between her and Alex's eager mouth, fueled by alcohol and her wife’s boldness at the bar.

“Alexandra Morgan, I swear to God if you give me a hickey,” but the breathless threat had gone ignored in favor of Alex's polite request that their driver make a pit stop.

Someone clears their throat from behind them in line and Alex nudges Kelley.

“How is it taking you this long to order? There’s four things on the menu, and you’ve been here a hundred times.”

Kelley stares harder at the menu through a focused squint, and shrugs.

“I’m really buzzed,” she whispers at Alex while her hand rubs absentmindedly at a spot on her neck, slowly realizing why it’s so warm beneath her fingertips.

“Just a cheeseburger,” Kelley says, smiling brightly at the patient cashier before turning to glare at Alex, who is trying not to stare at the hickey she’d left on her wife’s neck.

Kelley points a finger at her as she walks away from the counter, “She’s paying.” 

The restaurant is nearly empty except for the two of them, and the small family a few booths over that must be destined for Disneyland, or the beach, or some combo of the two based on the packed minivan in the parking lot. 

Alex doesn't complain when Kelley eats half of her fries, because of that mark on her neck, and because of the way that Kelley's foot is tracing along her ankle. Kelley's in her ear, a constant stream of vodka-fueled chatter about how badly they need a dog, but Alex is only half paying attention.

“We should get one of those,” she says slowly, suddenly, her eyes flicking from the booth across the way and back to her cheeseburger. Alex takes too big of a bite, and chews happily.

Kelley doesn’t have to look over at the spot where Alex’s attention was focused, because she’d been staring at the blonde-haired toddler asleep in his mom’s lap too, but she looks again anyway. 

They don’t talk about it much, adoption, or baby names, or what either one of them would be like on the sidelines of rec league soccer games. There’s still more life they want to live with just the two of them, but the playful hint at it still makes Kelley’s heart race all the same. 

Their side of the booth goes quiet for a beat, while their heads fill with ideas of a future that are still fuzzy around the edges, and then Kelley pulls them back the way she always does.

“You’re talking about getting a milkshake, right?”

Kelley waits for a big laugh from beside her, and when it doesn’t come she waits a little longer, and when it still doesn’t come she cranes her neck to look over at Alex, whose wide, soft smile makes her feel drunk all over again. 

“Obviously,” Alex says, still smiling, playing along the way she always does, her change in subject almost effortless. “I do owe you one anyway, for saving me from that boring man at the bar.”

“Honey, I appreciate the offer, but you already said thanks in the limo and now I have to wear a scarf for three days.”

Alex’s cheeks flush red, and Kelley takes one last peek at tempting wisps of blonde hair before kissing her wife in their quiet corner booth.

***

Their long season ends on the road, against a Chicago team that's proven to be just as unstoppable as everyone had predicted.

Kelley just wants the team to leave everything on the pitch, win, lose, or draw. It’s all she asks of them at their final training session, the day before it's all over. 

Alex guarantees her a win.

It's tradition now, rooming together the night before a big game, and Alex pressing promises she knows she can keep into Kelley’s warm skin.

“Chicago is averaging 2.7 goals a game. And their midfield is so stingy with the ball.” Kelley’s rebuttal comes sporadically, breathed out between kisses, and layers of clothes being tugged up and over her head.

“We tied them once,” Alex says through a haze of distraction, dropping Kelley’s expertly stripped away top off the side of the bed.

“Right, and that was without a healthy Mendez up top. They’ve lost three times all season.”

Alex’s lips pull away from Kelley’s collarbone then and she settles back onto the tops of her wife’s thighs, just on the verge of something close to breathless.

“Are you saying we can’t beat them?” Alex huffs, pushing back the tangled mess of hair that’s fallen across her face. 

“No, I’m just saying we should be realistic. I want to beat Chicago in their house just as much as you, but tying them would be a win, too. I don’t want you to be disappointed with a tie, is all. Reasonable expectations, you know?” 

Off Alex’s unconvinced expression, Kelley grins and grabs at the collar of her shirt, tugging until Alex starts to drop, “Come back here, please.”

“I get where you’re coming from, Coach,” Alex says from just above her, hands pressed into the mattress on either side of Kelley while she drops lower and lower until the necklace she wears dips into the valley at the base of Kelley’s throat. “But we’re getting you one last win if it kills us.”

*

Chicago snags a goal three minutes in, after Sydney gets her foot on the right end of a sloppy, nervy clearance that pinged around inside the box for too long.

Alex still has to fight the urge to let it sink her shoulders, but her doubt is brief, and pushed away on her own, just as Kelly voice is in their ears, “ It's okay, let's go.”

Alex takes a breath so deep that it spreads the gaps between every rib, and then she goes, with a nod from her younger partner. Alex and Kelsey run at Chicago's backline with everything they have, and it's desperate, and frenzied, and effective. Their shots ring off the crossbar and clip the wrong side of the posts, each one pushing just a little more doubt into the keeper's head until Alex forces her the wrong way one more time and curls the tying goal into the side netting just before halftime.

There’s a swarm of red around her instantly, and when it clears it's just the two of them on the jog back for the restart, Kelley outpacing her by a few steps, a giddy laugh caught in her throat. Kelley tugs her wife along by the wrist, as if Alex needs any extra encouragement to follow this person absolutely anywhere

*

In the locker room Kelley quietly gives Alex's season an expiration date. She gets thirty more minutes to do what she can, and then she’ll send in Aubrey from Duke, all six feet of her, to exploit Chicago's vertically challenged defense. 

Alex curls her fingers around Kelley’s armband, adjusting the velcro that’s just barely gone slack from bumps and tackles, and her words are easy.

“Got it, Coach.”

*

Alex doesn’t get another one, but when she steps off the pitch that final time with a glance back at Chicago’s weary backline, she knows it’s theirs.

And then her bold prediction is made true by Kelley’s careful engineering, Aubrey on the end of a lofted cross, her header perfectly-timed, and just out of reach for the diving keeper.

One goal and two dropped points means Chicago giving up the Supporters Shield, and when the ref blows the final whistle the stadium is silent except for one noisy patch of turf. Tucked up near the corner flag in a loud dogpile they celebrate this one win, and ending the season the way they all promised each other they would, with their heads held high.

***

An endless series of delays works hard to keep them from making it back home to LA at a reasonable hour, but the win, and what it means, hums warm beneath their skin, and they don’t care about a few more hours in the airport, Kelley’s legs across Alex’s lap in a quiet corner.

*

They’re still buzzing an endless number of hours later when the team bus drops them in the player’s parking lot, and Kelley presses Alex’s back into their car door, one hand still wrapped around the handle of her suitcase. Kelley kisses Alex the way she’s wanted to since at least hour six in the Chicago airport, and she doesn’t let go. They ignore the catcalls of scattering teammates, and Alex’s grip around Kelley tightens until they’re pressed in close enough to feel the aggressive rumbling in her stomach between them.

Alex tries to look sheepish when Kelley pulls away.

“How are you always hungry?”

*

There’s a six pack of something local and hoppy tucked under Kelley’s arm while she watches Alex deliberate carefully between ice cream flavors in the freezer section of their empty grocery store. Alex has the freezer door propped open, and the cold air bites at the tips of Kelley’s bare toes while she watches the way that Alex’s mouth fidgets as she scans the ingredient list on a carton of coconut milk ice cream that’s entirely for Kelley’s benefit.

“Alex, it’s the offseason. Get the good stuff.”

“Thank god,” Alex practically grunts, shoving the carton back onto the shelf.

She lets the freezer door slam shut before sidestepping over to the next one, her tongue half out and held between her teeth while she searches hard for her favorites.

Kelley still falls for her a little harder every day, for big reasons, and small reasons, and the way her tired face lights up over ice cream flavors at midnight in a grocery store. All Kelley really wants right then is to be home with Alex, tucked under warm sheets together for the rest of their lives, or at least a few long days.

“Al, take me home?” Kelley asks, leaning against a glass door while Alex drops cartons of ice cream into their shopping basket.

There’s something in Alex’s eyes when she looks up, bright and hopeful in a way that Kelley doesn’t quite get, and she doesn’t bother to question it, not with the way that Alex suddenly has her pressed against the glass. Her cold fingers grip at Kelley’s hips, but Alex’s words are warm across her cheeks.

“I have been dying for you to ask me that.”

*

In the empty parking lot, Alex slips the car keys from Kelley’s hand, dismissing the exaggerated confusion she’s given in return.

“Oh come on, the streets are empty. I have no one to even road rage at. Best behavior, I swear.”

There’s that look on Alex’s face again, maybe still, that bright hope that she can hardly contain, and Kelley wants to know everything. She slips into the passenger seat without protest, save for a playful roll of her eyes at the production Alex puts on while sliding the driver’s seat farther back from the steering wheel.

“You’re two inches taller. Chill.”

*

On late night drives around their city Alex’s fingers are usually laced with Kelley’s, or tracing along knuckles and the soft ridges of veins, but on this night they keep to themselves, tapping out a shaky rhythm on top of the steering wheel. The tapping doesn’t stop until Alex makes the wrong turn onto their street.

“Uh, pretty sure that was supposed to be a left turn there, buddy. Wait. Oh my god, is this why I always drive though? Because you don’t know directions?”

Kelley’s ribbing keeps on until Alex doesn’t make a move to correct her mistake, instead going further in the wrong direction until apartments and condos along the beach transition into small bungalows in a quiet neighborhood.

“Alex?”

“Just hold on a minute, I’ve never had to find it in the dark before.”

The car slows to a crawl, and then it comes to a stop. Alex cuts the engine across the street from a light blue house tucked beneath a street light that makes the whole property glow warm.

“What are we doing?” Kelley asks in a stage whisper that fills the quiet car.

Alex laughs while her hands run over her knees, forcing bravery into her body with a little bit of friction until she can sit taller in the driver’s seat.

“Ok,” Alex nods, clicking open her seatbelt so she can turn towards a confused Kelley. “That little blue house over there? The older woman who owns it waters her flowers every day at 7 am, and I know this because I used to run past her house every morning during our bad stretch.”

Kelley’s head is quick to turn towards Alex at the mention of their shaky summer, not because it’s been forgotten, but because of how easily it rolls off of them now, without a flinch, or the slightest ache in their hearts. 

“There’s something about this place that reminds me of you. I think you told me a long time ago, before we were even together, that you used to dream about a white picket fence house, or a front porch that you could watch the sunrise from like your mom and dad used to. Pretty sure I teased you a little about being a secret cheeseball, but I don’t remember exactly what it was, all I know is that this became my favorite stretch of road. I’d run past here every morning and whatever was in my head before melted away when I got here, and I could only think about you. It was a little bit of clarity while we were learning to fix ourselves.

Kelley is quiet in her spot, still unsure of what’s happening.

“And I think we should buy it,” Alex says finally.

There’s just enough light filtering into the car for her to make out the way that Kelley’s face doesn’t change at all, as if she hadn’t even heard the words Alex has been dying to say for weeks. Then there’s a slow blink, and a shake of her head, and Kelley snaps out of her trance. Slowly.

“Wait. What?”

 

The raspy edges of Alex’s laugh catch in her throat when she leans across the car to kiss at the confusion near the corners of Kelley’s eyes. When she pulls back, Alex’s explanation is shaky, and too quick, betrayed by the sudden return of her nerves.

“It’s not on the market yet, and there’s more bedrooms than we need right now, and the kitchen needs a little work, but the lady with the flowers is giving us the first shot at it, if we want it.”

The silence from the other side of the car feels overwhelming for a moment, but Alex reaches for Kelley’s hand, her fingers slipping along her palm, and the squeeze she gets in return steadies her. 

Alex takes a deep breath, and tries again.

“It doesn’t have to be this house, or this street, or even this part of town if you don’t want. It’s just- we’ve spent so many years with our lives packed away in suitcases, living in a borrowed space filled with borrowed furniture, and it worked for where we were. But now we’ve got a real spot in this city, and that little apartment by the ocean where I fell crazy in love with you is too small and too temporary for all the things we want to do next. Maybe it’s time to grow roots.”

Alex watches the way Kelley’s eyes move around the edges of the house, tracing along the wooden fence and across the tidy front lawn. Her gaze holds on something eventually, and Alex knows without looking that it’s the small front porch and the way it mustt remind Kelley just enough of where she’d grown up, when a life and a home anywhere but Georgia had seemed unimaginable to a small kid who loved her family so fiercely.

“I used to dream about a house with a front porch, like I had back home,” Kelley says softly, clarifying the memory for her wife, still staring at the house just over Alex’s shoulder. “You found us a house?”

“Yeah. Well, a home,” Alex nods. “And finding one that reminded you a little bit of Georgia felt like my shot at a grand, romantic gesture, since you totally sniped my proposal.”

“Al, it’s not a competition,” Kelley assures her gently, giving another squeeze to their laced-together fingers. “But maybe you should have pulled the trigger a little earlier?”

“Wow. Ok. I was trying to wait until I got back from Germany,” Alex’s playful scoff just makes Kelley’s grin bigger.

“Hey,” Kelley laughs, her warm hands finding Alex’s cheeks, steering her face until their eyes meet. “My whole life with you has been a grand, romantic gesture. Don’t sell yourself short, Al. Especially right now, because all I can think about is drinking coffee with you on that front porch.”

“Yeah?” Alex questions, her voice rattling with hope, and Kelley can feel her wide smile beneath her palms. 

“Just for the record, you found me a home a long time ago.” Kelley says then, her palm moving from Alex’s cheek to the spot just over her heart, where the beat is steady and warm. “But I think I’m ready for that spot to be our home too. For me and you, and whatever comes next.”

Kelley can feel the spike of Alex’s heartbeat beneath her palm, a fleeting morse code that’s only ever been meant for her, and it feels like the opening lines of their next chapter being typed out against her skin.

Alex meets her halfway across the car, shaky laughter and glassy eyes, and just before she kisses her, Kelley’s words are a promise across her lips.

“Let’s grow roots.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't exist without The OG. Thanks, pal.
> 
> And thanks, k****x h***. I see you.


End file.
